


Life Moves On, The Way Life Does

by saltysarah



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Alpha Laura Hale, Bad Parent Sheriff Stilinski, Eichen House is its own warning, Eichen | Echo House, F/M, Family Feels, Feels, Gen, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24162958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltysarah/pseuds/saltysarah
Summary: What do you do when your emotions are always playing catch-up with your actions? It's time for the Sheriff to face the music and start cleaning up messes…including his own.Inspired by cywscross' amazing AU - when you're going through hell (keep going for me)
Relationships: Melissa McCall/Sheriff Stilinski
Comments: 18
Kudos: 687





	Life Moves On, The Way Life Does

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [when you're going through hell (keep going for me)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17132132) by [cywscross](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/pseuds/cywscross). 



At first he thought it was a trick of the light.

* * *

After Claudia, after _Stiles,_ he’d trashed every last photo he’d had of them, pulled everything down, would’ve burnt it all if it hadn’t been for Melissa. She’d…she’d never agreed with sending Stiles away and she’d been the one to cry when news broke a year later about Stiles _running away,_ she and Scott both.

John couldn’t bring himself to admit it, but he only felt relief.

Mel still had copies of the photos they’d taken over the years, of her and Claudia, of Scott and Stiles playing together, all of them together at the park, of a better, brighter time. They were in her house and she’d extended an open invitation to him to come over and look at them, but swore he’d regret it if he ever did anything to them.

John had been over to the house countless times through the years. He knew exactly where all the photos were and had never once laid a hand on them.

Still, it was a- a…relief, to know that someone still remembered a time when things were better, when he’d had a _family_. He would never cheapen his relationship with Melissa to imply that what they’d developed was _lesser,_ mostly because she’d feed him his own balls if he did, but it was different. If his romance with Claudia had burnt like the sun, then Melissa was like the cool water that washed over him and slaked his thirst.

And then the Eichen House breakout happened.

The clean up was a nightmare, to put it lightly. The hospital claimed the ‘monsters’ sighted had been due to hallucinogenics, but none of that explained the blood splattered all over the walls, the dismembered bodies, the _chains,_ the goddamned _torture implements_ masquerading as medical equipment – it was then that he thought of Stiles and was so, so grateful he’d run away.

It didn’t erase the guilt for having put him here in the first place.

He’d ignored the marks his wife put on his son before his death, made excuses for the screams and accusations, pretended to see what he only wanted to see, no matter that there was no way Stiles could’ve had anything to do with how Claudia’s heart had suddenly exploded.

God, what the hell had he been _thinking?_

And then Chicago blew up, and the Hales returned to Beacon Hill.

They were wild desperate things, practically reeking of fear and hope.

“I forced him to keep quiet,” Laura Hale sobbed, clutching a practically catatonic Derek Hale to her chest. “I told him we had to keep our heads down, we had to be quiet. I couldn’t lose him too.”

“There was one more in the family, wasn’t there?” he asked with a frown as he tried to recall their details on file, biting back the wince when Laura flinched. “One more who survived the fire.”

“Peter,” she rasped, “Uncle Peter. His burns were- we left him in Eichen House,” she admitted, guilt leaking out of every pore. John finally remembered – Mel had been crying, had worked in Emergency the night of the fire and Peter had been the only one of the Hales who’d made it to the hospital, alive.

“ _Fourth-degree burns,_ John, I’ve never seen anything like that, and the _smell-.”_ She’d clutched at him, choking on both the scent-memory and her tears. “Thank god he’s in a coma. I wouldn’t wish that pain on my worst enemy.”

He dimly recalled having seen Peter Hale around town, attractive in the way all the Hales were, but little else. They’d never met in-person.

John started back to the present, fighting back a wince when he realised Laura had kept talking while he’d been lost in his thoughts.

“He was always so independent and headstrong, I was certain he’d be able to- to- I don’t know, but I couldn’t help him, not with Derek to handle- so I thought- I thought professionals should-.”

“Why not the hospital?” he asked. "They have a long-term care ward, too."

Laura shook her head. “Peter was- was a special case, they wouldn’t have been able to handle him. I thought- I thought-.”

She faltered there and John couldn’t blame her; they’d all thought the same thing.

Peter Hale had been declared dead not 2 weeks after his admission.

Then again, after the announcement, hollow-eyed people thought long-dead were shuffling forward seeking restitution, their health, lives, and sanity destroyed by whatever the hell Eichen House thought they were doing. It was entirely possible Peter Hale's death certificate had been a forgery, and he'd recovered and vanished in the breakout. It was entirely possible Stiles had-.

His boy had been _9._ There were no other child admissions to Eichen House; the next youngest had been _Hale,_ who’d been 24. John remembered the bloodied scalpels on the bloodier operating tables and had to throw up. There had been so many blood samples, organ samples, _body parts,_ all of them labelled with an utterly useless number system that they couldn’t match to the in-patients since the file room had been burnt down and Eichen House hadn’t believed in digital files.

He’d considered asking his blood be used for comparison, but Kelly Nguyen, the lab tech in-charge, had shook her head at him with regret.

“There are too many samples, Sheriff, and this case is too high profile for me to look the other way, even for you,” she’d said, before biting her lip and adding, “Beacon Hills is small. We all knew of someone sent there and we never questioned it. We might not have liked them, but no one deserved that fate.”

This was before they found the crematorium smothered in bone ash. John stood within its walls, cold despite the summer's heat, and could only think that even the Nazis had left traces of those they’d tried to exterminate.

Eichen House didn’t even manage that much.

He arrested Alan Deaton and his sister, Marin Morrell, helped the FBI seize Garrison Myers’ estate after the man wrote down his confession and committed suicide, and got into a firefight with Adrian Harris, of all people, at the local high school. Bobby Finstock broke a lacrosse stick over Harris’ head, giving Jordan Parrish the opening he needed to take the shot.

The Hale family ruins were officially condemned, Laura only staying long enough to process the sale of the land back to the state for a pittance before she and her brother were gone again, never to return.

After that John was done.

Mel didn’t say it aloud, but she was relieved. She thought he should’ve retired years ago.

Being a house-husband gave John the time to finally learn all the house-husbandry skills he should’ve picked up when Claudia first got sick. His memory was unforgiving; he could still recall Stiles crying with hunger after Claudia was first hospitalised, but that had tapered off sometime in the following weeks, although it was in said weeks where his memory started getting fuzzy, alcohol having softened the details.

He finally, _finally_ went through the remains of Claudia and Stiles’ belongings some 10 years too late, crying into moth-eaten cloth and yellow-paged books. All of his photos were gone, and it was all his fault.

He hadn’t even repaired Stiles’ room where that flash grenade had gone off when his house had been robbed – the robbery had happened the same week of the Eichen House breakout and John had rushed home, thinking – he hadn’t known what he’d thought, but his house had been as stale as it had ever been, stinking of old alcohol and the strangest overtone of ozone, almost like lightning, even though it hadn’t rained in weeks.

He hadn’t thought there was anything missing, nothing except a couple hundred bucks and his office hadn’t even been touched, and the fingerprints the technicians had lifted weren’t on record. For a moment he’d thought about giving the lab something of Stiles’ to- god, John hadn't even known what he'd been hoping for, but he’d bit his lip clean through to keep the words in his mouth.

Yeah, living with hope was hard, but living with the confirmation was even harder.

At the end of the day, all he had was an old stuffed toy and Claudia’s jewellery.

He paid for a memorial to be erected next to Claudia’s that year, with Stiles’ full name and date of birth but no date of death. Mel helped him pick it, came down to the cemetery with him to speak to Gordon Liementaro, the new undertaker, and see it set up.

The memorial was for him, mostly, and Melissa, to give her and Scott the closure they hadn’t had. Scott had asked him about the date of death, stuttering his way through the question, but John just shook his head in the face of Melissa’s censure and said it was okay, he’d explain.

“I don’t know where Stiles is, Scott,” he said gently. “Maybe he’s…gone. I’m don’t know if we’ll ever know for sure. This memorial is for the people who are still here, you and me and your mum. I…I haven’t thought about Stiles for a long, long time. Maybe this is still being selfish, but I can’t- I _won’t-_ put a date there unless I know for certain. I’ve hurt him enough already.”

Scott didn’t look particularly convinced, but it wasn’t as if John was, either. Hearing the words aloud – it still sounded like an excuse, and John would know excuses. He’d only been making them for his own sorry arse for the past 10 years.

2 years after he retired, he and Mel flew to New York – technically to visit Scott doing his vet training, but mostly just for a holiday.

Mel would live off seafood if she ever got the chance, so he splurged for a small flat on the Upper East Side and found a list of well-reviewed seafood restaurants within walking distance. By the 3rd day she was whining about how he should’ve booked a place further away so that they’d be forced to walk more. She smacked him, laughing after John suggested he could roll her back to their flat.

Scott came down from New Haven the following day to meet them with his girlfriend, Kira Yukimura, whom he’d met while treating their family cat. She was a sweet girl, all smiles and sugary kindness.

It was obvious Scott was in love with her; the way they traded shy glances and dopey looks when they thought he and Mel weren’t looking made it obvious. Mel glanced at him, lips pressed together in a wry smile.

Their own marriages had started off like this. Rafael had been a charmer at the start, at least until alcohol and his ambitions had worn away the polish. John had given Claudia so much of himself he’d had nothing left for his son. But this was how they had all started: with being so, _so_ utterly in love.

Neither of them could predict how Scott and Kira would end, but at least they’d have the fairytale start.

* * *

He thought it was of a trick of the light.

They were in New York; the whole _city_ was made up of flashing lights.

He couldn’t explain why the couple across the street caught his attention – no, it was a couple and their friend, the man in front of them having turned around to retort at the couple, and that was another man under the other’s arm despite the mop of hair, shaking as he laughed.

As he laughed a hauntingly _familiar_ laugh.

The man tucked under that arm was shorter than the other 2, and he reached up with an unhealthily thin hand for the man attached to that arm, pulling his head down. John looked back to the street ahead of him, feeling his ears heat at this show of intimacy – but they didn’t even kiss. Instead, the shorter man turned his face away at the last moment, nuzzling at the taller man’s strong jaw.

The man in front of them, handsome in the way Gary Oldman had been as young Dracula, smiled and said something that had the taller man snapping back even as the shorter man laughed again, that same familiar laugh.

The sound of it made the blood freeze in his veins, throwing him back literal decades to when Claudia had still been alive and Stiles had been _theirs._

He couldn’t catch a glimpse of the shorter man’s face, concealed by his hair and the taller man’s arm.

“John?” It was Mel, tugging at his hand. He hadn’t even realised he’d stopped walking and was being left behind. “John, what is it?”

“It’s nothing,” he said automatically, and then winced at the look on her face. “I mean, yes, it’s something, it’s just- I thought I saw-.”

He turned back to see that the trio across the street had stopped, too. The Oldman lookalike had stepped forward to complete the protective circle around the shortest of their number with the taller man, who was watching them – no, watching _him_ with clear dislike.

There was something familiar about the man’s handsome face, the angles and sharp features on him softened by gently curling hair, a well-trimmed beard, and incongruously large ears.

The shocking blue of his eyes, visible even at this distance, tugged at a memory just out of reach but try as he might, John couldn’t recall where he’d seen those eyes before.

Especially when the shortest man tipped his head up to say something, and the electricity in those eyes dissolved into something warm and gentle.

“John!” Mel hissed, yanking him forward. “It’s rude to stare, what’s wrong with you?”

“No, that wasn’t why-.”

He turned his head again only to find that the shortest man had turned, too, and his breath caught.

The face of a stranger looked back at him.

John spun around sharply, trying to keep his breathing under control.

“John?” Mel’s voice was starting to sound alarmed. “John, what’s going on?”

“No,” he rasped, smoothing his free hand over his face, “I was- it was my mistake, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it was my fault, please-!”

When he turned back, all 3 of them were gone.

**Author's Note:**

> …but some things are prettier the way life was, before we gave each other love – and broken arms (FINNEAS - Life Moves On)
> 
> I couldn't help but try and fill in some of the blanks after reading cywscross' amazing work, and I kind of wanted the Sheriff, Laura, and Derek to just, pay, a little? I don't think I managed much vindication, but I think it says something that the peace the Sheriff wanted so much for so long was so easily rattled. Honestly, here Melissa is a goddamned saint (it's not hard to tell how I feel about her, huh?).


End file.
